Pick of the playersGreat musicians are born, not made. True. Yet in reality there is more to it than genius and the museSat Apr 29 2000 - 01:00
`Someone nudges a stone away and there's a story'A young woman returns home to the Sri Lanka she had left 15 years earlierSat Apr 29 2000 - 01:00
Being Dead, by Jim Crace (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)One of the finest English novels of recent years, this languid, intensely imagined Booker runner-up reports on the brutal murder…Sat Apr 29 2000 - 01:00
The Plato Papers by Peter Ackroyd (Vintage £6.99 in UK)A science fiction satire set 2000 years in the future featuring Plato, the philosopher, may not sound like the sort of book you…Sat Apr 22 2000 - 01:00
Bach for the future (Part 1)On Good Friday, 1727 - 273 years ago yesterday - Bach's masterpiece St Matthew Passion was performed for the first timeSat Apr 22 2000 - 01:00
The Romantic, by Hermann Broch, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)Set partly in the Berlin of 1888, this is the first volume of Broch's magnificent trilogy The SleepwalkersSat Apr 15 2000 - 01:00
Saul in the mindVaster than life, with a flair for luxury, Abe Ravelstein is "a large Jewish man from Dayton, Ohio"Sat Apr 15 2000 - 01:00
The Mercy Boys, by John Burnside (Vintage, £5.99 in UK)This second novel from one of Britain's most established youngish poets and author of a truly shocking debut, The Dumb House (…Sat Apr 15 2000 - 01:00
A full-blooded testamentNovelists have often chosen to walk the tight rope between fiction and reportage when deciding to base a novel upon real life…Sat Apr 08 2000 - 01:00
The Tulip by Anna Pavord (Bloomsbury, £8.99 in UK)Who would have suspected that the story of a flower would inspire a narrative which is as romantic and as exciting as it is scholarly…Sat Apr 08 2000 - 01:00
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (Penguin, £5.99 in UK)Polymath Anthony Burgess was always at the mercy of his impatient, subversive geniusSat Apr 01 2000 - 01:00
Thoughtful but artistically laboured novel that is empty at heartThis could well be one of the oddest novels published this year - or any year for that matterSat Mar 25 2000 - 00:00
While I Was Gone By Sue Miller (Bloomsbury, £6.99 in UK)This is one of those too easily overlooked novels. Narrator Jo Becker is a careful, unabashedly self-absorbed characterSat Mar 25 2000 - 00:00
The sum also risesThere is a Faustian quality about this clever, taut quest novel of sorts which explores the themes of pride and failure through…Sat Mar 18 2000 - 00:00
An Irishwoman's DiaryFunny how an episode taking all of three minutes can cause a lasting reactionMon Mar 13 2000 - 00:00
A kind manAustin is middle-aged and unremarkable, but for the fact he is an American living in Paris and as a writer possesses some claims…Sat Mar 11 2000 - 00:00
Darker-than-dark domestic saga in banal, expletive-laden macho-speakFrom almost the opening sentence of this darker-than-dark domestic saga, it is obvious that Doug Willis, unlikeable anti-hero…Sat Mar 04 2000 - 00:00
Glamorama by Bret Easton Ellis (Picador, £6.99 in UK)The fourth novel from Bret Easton Ellis, and his first since American Psycho (1991), amounts to a deadpan extravaganza of deceptive…Sat Feb 26 2000 - 00:00
Shrewd stories with a strong presenceThe writer has a strong presence in this shrewd collection of storiesSat Feb 26 2000 - 00:00
Money by Martin Amis (Penguin Classic, £7.99 in UK)Any lingering doubts as to the spectacular linguistic abilities of Amis the Younger are defiantly crushed by this hilarious, …Sat Feb 19 2000 - 00:00
Who are the bullies, who are the victims, what is power?A Spanish agricultural labourer arrives in a tidy Swiss village to work for a fastidious dairy farmerSat Feb 19 2000 - 00:00
Hit-and-miss MametOkay, so his language is tough, loud and definitely of the streetSat Feb 12 2000 - 00:00
After Pushkin edited by Elaine Feinstein (Carcanet, £7.95)At the close of the 20th century, one of the literary observations most often made concerned the astonishing legacy left by the…Sat Feb 12 2000 - 00:00
An Irishwoman's DiaryIt all began with a small boy, like so many small boys, becoming fascinated with stamps. This interest grewMon Feb 07 2000 - 00:00
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)Up to the publication of American Pastoral, Roth made a career largely out of writing about himself - his life, his libido, his…Sat Feb 05 2000 - 00:00
A man of moods seen through the eyes of manyNine years after the publication of the acclaimed first volume of his life of the great poet, thinker and near complete symbol…Sat Feb 05 2000 - 00:00
RTE's `Arts Show' will end in May with the retirement of presenter Mike MurphyOne of RTE Radio's most popular programmes, the Arts Show, will end in May with the decision by its presenter, Mike Murphy, to…Sat Jan 29 2000 - 00:00
Bullet Park, by John Cheever (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)Commuting seems to have become a fact of life in the US before it developed anywhere elseSat Jan 29 2000 - 00:00
Updike? He can do pretty much anythingOnce the reader grasps that somehow, in between writing fiction and continuing to read extensively, John Updike produces an exhausting…Sat Jan 29 2000 - 00:00
Jonathan Swift, by Victoria Glendinning (Pimlico, £9.99 in UK)Early on in this overly personal, rather jolly account of the life of one of the most enigmatic, complex and contradictory of…Sat Jan 15 2000 - 00:00
The Folded Leaf, by William Maxwell (Panther, £6.99 in UK)An unlikely friendship between two very different boys develops in 1920s ChicagoSat Jan 15 2000 - 00:00
Felicia's Journey, by William Trevor (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)Quiet, detached and yet invariably unnervingly alert to the small cruelties of existence, William Trevor remains a master storyteller…Sat Dec 18 1999 - 00:00
Stories without a safety netSince the publication last year of the English translation of Sebald's graceful elegy The Rings of Saturn, a growing international…Sat Dec 18 1999 - 00:00
Deception by Philip Roth (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)I didn't much like this when it first came out in 1990 and neither time nor maturity has altered that opinionSat Dec 18 1999 - 00:00
Journeys to the edge of the worldGhosts follow English writer Jonathan Raban whereever he goes; on his journeys, whether by boat or car or footSat Dec 18 1999 - 00:00
An Irishwoman's DiaryThere's nothing quite like a catchy tune, and Handel certainly wrote his share of them - as did Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart and many…Tue Dec 07 1999 - 00:00
Casting a cool eye on her countryIn a Paris Review interview dating from 1979, South African writer Nadine Gordimer attributed the birth of her political consciousness…Sat Nov 20 1999 - 00:00
Sour Sweet by Timothy Mo (Paddleless, £6.99 in UK)Shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize, Hong Kong writer Timothy Mo's lively debut has retained all its freshness, humour and …Sat Nov 20 1999 - 00:00
The Irish in New York: no stereotype has been left out, no sin unrecordedThe Irish in America are almost as subjected to cliche and stereotyping as are Americans in Ireland - not forgetting, of course…Sat Nov 13 1999 - 00:00
Magic realism turns to weary harshnessBy far the most interesting question arising from Isabel Allende's new novel is, who outgrew that most exhausted of literary …Sat Nov 06 1999 - 00:00
Ten Things I Hate About . . . Builders1. Their standard greeting: "I'm up to my tonsils/eyeballs/neck etc. but... "Thu Nov 04 1999 - 00:00
On the way from Rome to RumThe art and culture of the Mediterranean region is as rich and diverse as its physical area is vastSat Oct 23 1999 - 01:00
The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller (Granta, £6.99 in UK)NO number of re-readings will lessen the impact of Muller's strangely deadpan and surrealistic narrative based on the horrors…Sat Oct 23 1999 - 01:00
Ahdaf Soueif has written a politically ambitious and important book. But as a novel, The Map of Love is more likely to ensure that the reader sheds tears of laughter rather than sympathyThis year's Booker shortlist may well linger in the memory longer than most if only because the judges achieved such a wide geographical…Sat Oct 23 1999 - 01:00
Griet expectationsThis atmospheric, tautly beautiful second novel from the US-born, London-based Chevalier was inspired by the painting by Vermeer…Sat Oct 16 1999 - 01:00
Haunted by an old Chinese storyA widow, determined to protect her daughter from disappointment, orders the girl's suitor to "prove his worth" before the couple…Sat Oct 09 1999 - 01:00
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by Jose Saramago (Harvill, £6.99 in UK)First published in Portugal in 1984 and translated into English eight years later, this is one of the truly great 20th century…Sat Oct 09 1999 - 01:00
England, England by Julian Barnes (Picador, £6.99 in UK)Here is yet another of those so-clever-it-hurts English novels which is more concerned with exposing the state of the nation …Sat Oct 09 1999 - 01:00
